When Truman Capote Wrote Me A Story

I needed him, he needed me

In 1981, when I was hired by Ladies’ Home Journal, it was owned by an odd millionaire named Raymond Mason from Jacksonville, Florida, a deal maker, who ran a disjointed conglomerate called The Charter Company that was primarily in the oil business. He also owned both Redbook and Ladies’ Home Journal. Someone told me he thought that was a way to date the stars on the covers.

But money must have become a little tight because about eight months after I was hired, Mason abruptly sold Redbook to Hearst Corporation. They had Good Housekeeping, a major women’s magazine, and did not want the Journal. Nobody did. Finally, Robert Riordan, a very small-time publisher with a couple of little newsstand magazines, was loaned enough money to buy it.

Riordan came to my office for our first meeting. Small, thin, very Irish. Just as he started to tell me we would have to move from our fancy Lexington Avenue offices to somewhere downtown, my assistant came into the room.

“There’s someone on the phone,” she said. “He says his name is Truman Capote.”

I looked at Riordan. “Excuse me,” I said. “But I should take this call.”

“Absolutely,” he replied. It wasn’t a bad beginning.

The voice on the phone sounded like Truman Capote—the lisp, the unique enunciation. He told me he had written a new story, a Christmas story, and it would be perfect for the Ladies’ Home Journal. This was a few years after he had published his short story “Le Cote Basque” about his “swans,” the high-society women who were his friends. The story, published in Esquire, revealed embarrassing details about their lives. It had ruined his relationship with them, which had been the primary focus of his life at the time. It was supposed to be part of a novel he was writing called Answered Prayers, a novel he never finished.

I doubted if the magazines he usually had published in—The New Yorker or Esquire—would even want a Christmas story. But for us—a Christmas story by Capote? Capote, who had written Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Of course I would be interested.

“Is it finished?”

“Almost,” he said. “Just a few little bitty touches.”

“I would need it by the first week in September.”

“Fine,” he said.

I also told him that magazines just didn’t pay what they once had. Still magazines then were paying writers good money. In those days one could earn a living as a magazine writer with three or four features a year.

“Ten thousand dollars. All right?” I said.

“Fine,” he agreed. I’m sure he needed the money.

Riordan, who had not left the room, smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

“That’s terrific,” Riordan said after I hung up. He had been the publisher of 1001 Decorating Ideas, which had, at best, a circulation of 200,000. Now he owned a magazine that had a circulation of six million and was publishing a Truman Capote short story—his last published story, as it turned out. Riordan was in a very good mood.

I called Capote every three days after that, asking him how he was doing. Most of the time he didn’t answer. I was very nervous. I could find something else to put in the Christmas issue, but my new boss was so focused on the Capote story.

Two days before his deadline, I finally reached Capote.

“How are you sending in the story?” I asked.

“I am in East Hampton, dearie. Can you send someone to pick it up?”

“I’ll come,” I said. We agreed to meet for lunch on Saturday at Bobby Van’s. My husband and I drove out. I was not sure he would show up. And if he did, would he have the manuscript?

He was half an hour late. My husband was about to order his second drink. But Capote was there, looking like a slightly embalmed version of himself, egg-like in a cap, without a wrinkle. He had done a lot of plastic surgery.

But we got along well. He liked that my husband was British. He told me he would write me more stories, maybe do some interviews for me. He knew everyone, of course, he said. He was full of ideas, he said.

In the car ride home, I read the story, “One Christmas.” It was handwritten, without cross-out or an addition. It looked like he had written it in one go. It was really a memoir, quite like the first pieces he had written when he was starting his career. It was about his visiting the father he hardly knew in New Orleans at Christmas when he was eight years old and manipulating his father into buying him the expensive present he wanted. I thought it was very good and very sad.

After that, Capote would call every few months and suggest we have lunch at Le Grenouille. He had another idea for me. I would sit behind one of the lavish floral arrangements waiting for him to turn up. Sometimes he was an hour late

When he finally arrived, he had no ideas but insisted we order both the Grand Marnier and chocolate soufflé, which I just had to taste. By the end of the lunch, he was so sleepy I would get a car and take him back to his apartment at the UN Plaza.

The last lunch we had, he was very paranoid and told me that there were plots against him and someone was planning to kill him. After that he moved to California and died a few months later.

Recently I looked at that long-ago issue—December 1982. The memoir is in it though not that prominently featured. The issue is filled with holiday recipes, holiday decoration, an essay from former First Lady Betty Ford who, because of her honesty about her drinking and her breast cancer, was very popular with our readers. And there are ten pages of cigarette advertisements, which we badly needed at that time.

On the cover is the little girl from E.T., Drew Barrymore, looking adorable, holding a box overflowing with Christmas cookies and smiling sweetly. Drew now has a daily talk show. She wanted to be on a recent cover of the AARP Magazine and receive an AARP membership card on her show. That’s because she wanted everyone to know she was 50 and finally happier with herself than she had ever been.

I still have Capote’s handwritten manuscript. I plan to donate it to the New
York Public Library where most of his papers are kept.

Do you miss the short stories in women’s magazines?